StephenBarkley.com

The Napoleon of Notting Hill © 1904
Wordsworth © 1996
129 pages

Futurists fall into two categories: those who predict the collapse of civilization (Wells, Orwell, Atwood), and those who anticipate sunshine and lollipops (Kurzwiel, The Jetsons). Chesterton invented a new category. In 1904, he wrote a novel about a future eight decades later where everything remained the [...]

Angel Time: The Songs of the Seraphim © 2009
Alfred A. Knopf
268 pages

Angel Time is the story of an assassin who repents and teams up with an angel to do God’s work at various times in history. Rice envisions a number of books for this new character.
Here a disclaimer before I continue: I’ve never read Interview [...]

The Piano Man’s Daughter Special Edition © 1995
Harper Collins
499 pages

I’ve read Findley before: Pilgrim: A Novel and The Wars. Although this title sounded a little too Hallmark-ish  for my taste, I gave it a shot on the strength of his other books and my love for pianos.
The novel felt painfully average. It was easy to [...]

The Year of the Flood: A Novel © 2009
McClelland & Stewart
434 pages

In Oryx and Crake, Atwood painted a future where advances in genetic engineering created a plague that eradicated most of humanity. I loved the novel for its realism—many of the engineered creatures Atwood envisioned had already been created. It was a great work of [...]

Downtown Owl: A Novel© 2008
Scribner (2009)
275 pages

I was flipping through Klosterman at Chapters when an employee came up behind me and started gushing about him. The bookseller compared Klosterman to Douglas Coupland—I was sold.
Downtown Owl is a story about three people in a small town in 1983/84 North Dakota. Mitch is a high-school student who [...]

Father Elijah: An Apocalypse © 1996
Ingatius
597 pages

Holy. O’Brien’s writing bleeds holiness.
I took a chance with this book. I was browsing the religion section at “So Many Books…” in Huntsville when I saw the tell-tale band across a plain spine that marks Ignatius Press books. That along with the promise of an Apocalyptic novel that wasn’t [...]

The Complete Stories © 1971
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
555 pages

Brutal.
I was racking my brain to come up with the perfect superlative to describe O’Connor’s short stories and nothing fits better. All of the recurring themes—racism, murder, loss, pain, religious fanaticism—are written with an edge that can make you physically wince while reading.
This collection is no chore [...]

Man Who Was Thursday (Wordsworth Collection) © 1908
Wordsworth (1995)
145 pages

You’ve got to be curious about any book described as a “surreal anarchist fantasy” (Wordsworth edition introduction). I was pleased to find the classic wit of Chesterton on every page.
This book’s paradoxical. Chesterton’s writing is expansive and leisurely, yet the pace of the mystery is breathtaking [...]

Of Mice and Men © 1937
Bantam Books (1984)
118 pages

I’m going to go ahead and assume you’ve already read this book. If you haven’t, go and read it then come back. It’s a classic for a reason!
I spent the day after I finished to book wondering how I became so emotionally involved in the story. It [...]

Armageddon in Retrospect © 2008
Berkley Books
232 pages

This doesn’t feel like the posthumous collection it is. These stories are impeccably crafted, and fit perfectly together. That’s a credit to the skill of the writer: even his non-published works are eminently publishable.
I started to read Vonnegut after watching him interact with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. [...]